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The January 1987 issue of Access, a quarterly update from R.R. Bowker Company, contains a brief article entitled “Ulrich's: A Prime Source in Any Format.” This short piece tells us that 1987 marked the silver anniversary of the founding of Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory and that we have good reason to celebrate. The reason is that Ulrich's, and its sister publications, Irregular Serials and Annuals and Bowker's Serials Database Update, are now available on CD‐ROM and known as Ulrich's Plus. The article states that “this electronic disc format offers high speed access, multiple search points and ease of use.” The article also informs us that data for Ulrich's are continuously revised and updated by no less than thirteen editors who have multilingual skills and whose combined efforts provide indepth profiles of seventy thousand serials and thirty‐five thousand irregulars published worldwide, that there are updates for more than sixty‐five thousand entries, and that there is a “descriptive analysis of the content and point of view of each publication.” And, finally, that all periodicals are subject indexed.

If one were to ask a person on the street to name a type of reference book, the answer, if the question were fully understood, would most likely be “an encyclopedia.” If pressed for five additional types, the respondent would undoubtedly include an almanac.

Thoughts of those situations I have been in that might find me on a deserted island quickly cross my mind and of these, one stands out as a genuine possibility. I was in the army. The adjustment to living openly in a barracks with one hundred or so other young men without an inch of privacy had not been easily made. Basic training in the infantry had kept me busy, on edge, and very tired; consequently, there was no time for reading or thinking. I was not supposed to think. When the long awaited and eagerly sought first “pass” was granted, I was content to get to a quiet place off the post and just stare into space, contemplating what the future might hold and, indeed, whether or not I would survive to have a future. I am forever grateful to Lucille Hatch who gave me permission to practice on the organ at the First Methodist Church in Santa Maria, California, and this I did on many occasions. I had been in the army only four months but this was sufficient time for me to have become thoroughly indoctrinated in the ways of making war. There had been the discipline, the lectures and training movies, the drills and maneuvers, the simulated games, the mock‐ups and the bivouacs. All were planned, designed, and executed to make me a killer in combat, and, if not killed, able to survive under the most adverse and difficult conditions in a land totally foreign to my way of thinking and living. I had had all of the necessary physical examinations and the required “shots” for travel outside the United States, and with “kill or be killed” ringing in my ears, I found myself en route overseas.

When the first edition of Poems by Emily Dickinson was published in 1890, Samuel G. Ward, a writer for the Dial, commented, “I am with all the world intensely interested in Emily Dickinson. She may become world famous or she may never get out of New England” (Sewall 1974, 26). A century after Emily Dickinson's death, all the world is intensely interested in the full nature of her poetic genius and her commanding presence in American literature. Indeed, if fame belonged to her she could not escape it (JL 265). She was concerned about becoming “great.” Fame intrigued her, but it did not consume her. She preferred “To earn it by disdaining it—”(JP 1427). Critics say that she sensed her genius but could never have envisioned the extent to which others would recognize it. She wrote, “Fame is a bee./It has a song—/It has a sting—/Ah, too, it has a wing” (JP 1763). On 7 May 1984 the names of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were inscribed on stone tablets and set into the floor of the newly founded United States Poets' Corner of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, “the first poets elected to this pantheon of American writers” (New York Times 1985). Celebrations in her honor draw a distinguished assemblage of international scholars, renowned authors and poets, biographers, critics, literary historians, and admirers‐at‐large. In May 1986 devoted followers came from places as distant as Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, and Japan to Washington, DC, to participate in the Folger Shakespeare Library's conference, “Emily Dickinson, Letter to the World.”

The Dictionary of National Biography (or DNB as it is commonly called and as it will be referred to in this paper) is a classic. Depending on whether a library owns an original edition published by Smith, Elder and Company or a reprint edition published by Oxford University Press, sixty‐three brown volumes or twenty‐two blue volumes and supplements loom bulkily from the shelves. It would be an odd, ill‐trained reference librarian, historian, or scholar of English literature who has never heard of the DNB, let alone used and perused it. But mere bulk does not explain the lasting fame and staying power of this reference work, whose first volume appeared in January 1885 over a century ago.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes and perceptions of Greek librarians regarding information literacy programs and their preparedness for such programs.

The study was targeted at all professional and paraprofessional staff of the academic libraries in Greece and Cyprus. The instrument was a specially designed structured questionnaire which included 20 questions, in sum 67 variables.

Most libraries do not deliver information literacy programs, but some kind of library instruction. Many respondents consider that more money, more librarians and an appropriately equipped space are the best ways to improve information literacy programs. Concerning the information literacy trainers, there are those who emphasize teaching abilities and/or pedagogical experience, and those who emphasize infrastructure and funding.

The paper contributes to the existing knowledge of information literacy skills by revealing certain issues regarding the academic libraries in Greece and Cyprus.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with information literacy including instruction in the use of information resources, research, and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the seventeenth to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items, in English published in 1990. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.

Shortly after I arrived in Baton Rouge to begin studies toward a Ph.D. in history in the early 1970s, I was assigned the dubious task of giving lectures and grading examinations in History 1001, the first half of “Western Civilizations.” After attempting to grade the first semester's exams, which always included a section of identifications, I began to look seriously for a standard reference book of people, places, and dates, since the students were much given to inventive imagination. Several fellow graduate students advised me to obtain a copy of “Langer,” which they referred to as the “Historian's Bible.” It was to be one of my wisest purchases, and the book has continued to serve me well over the years. The book to which they referred me was William Langer's An Encyclopedia of World History, which a prominent historian has called the “Diary of Humankind.”

Some reference books are not only useful but a pleasure to read. For anyone interested in literature, the outstanding example is the Wilson Authors Series, which, for over fifty years, has provided excellent summaries of the lives and works of critically acclaimed or popular writers known to English‐speaking readers. Through their coverage of minor writers and inclusion of the autobiographical statements of many twentieth‐century writers, these volumes have constituted a valuable record of the literary scene. Despite the proliferation of literary reference works in recent years, some covering more authors, others providing lengthier articles, the Wilson series has remained a cornerstone of the reference collections of libraries of all sizes and a model of concise biographical writing.

With this issue of Reference Services Review we launch a series of articles in which we will describe and discuss the various publication programs currently being carried out at Pierian Press, as well as others that we will introduce in the future. Our purpose, however, goes beyond simple dissemination of information. RSR readers with strong intellectual interests in and substantial knowledge about particular subjects are invited to consider becoming Pierian Press authors.